My Fourth Trip To India: Part 1

Well, as I type this I am waiting for my flight to go on my fourth business trip to India. This trip is a follow on to my trip to India and Germany in January that I detailed in my Travelogue section. But this time, I am going to be participating in the hiring of new tech support staff for the company I worked for in January. They wanted me to be part of the process because I have very high standards when it comes to customer service and they want the very best people working for them. Thus over the last few months I’ve been helping the to screen candidates and get down to a final list of candidates who if they survive the interview process, will become members of their technical support team.

Now I have to admit that unlike previous trips to India, I have been dreading this one for one reason. Air quality. Apparently the whole city is in a blanket of smog that is so bad, that Untied Airlines which is the airline that I used in January to get to India stopped flying there briefly. Thus I am on my least favorite airline which is Air Canada because that was what was available at the time I booked my tickets. To be fair, any other time I have flown this flight with Air Canada, I have not had a problem. But my last few experiences with this airline quite frankly sucked. Thus they have an opportunity to impress me and change my mind about them seeing as I am flying both ways with them this time around. Another thing in the’s flight’s favor is that it is a direct flight to New Delhi.

My MacBook Pro with Retina Display is in my laptop bag as it has always been a reliable traveller as it has proven to be rugged and durable. To ensure that I have no issues in terms protecting my data, I am traveling with this Orico drive enclosure that has a Samsung 850 EVO SSD in it. This has a bootable clone of my MacBook Pro that I can restore or boot from if I have to. I know it will work because I tested it several times in the days before my trip. It is being packed in my checked luggage so I can ensure that all copies of my data are in multiple places. Speaking of my checked luggage, I am using a Tile Sport that I got a few days ago. It promises to have more range than previous Tile products, and it is allegedly louder to boot. It will be interesting to see how well it works on this trip. Expect a review when I get back that will reveal how well it works.

I have a ProCase Universal Electronics Accessories Bag that I am stashing everything from USB cables, USB-A to USB-C adapters, a SD card reader, a travel USB hub, my Apple Watch charger, a travel mouse, Ethernet cable, video and Ethernet dongles for my MacBook Pro, a Thunderbolt cable, and some USB sticks that have macOS High Sierra and Diskwarrior… Not that the latter works with High Sierra. There’s also a 16GB USB drive that’s blank in case I need it. Though I carry a 4GB drive and my 32GB Sandisk drive on my keychain. The 4GB USB drive has copies of my passport, drivers license and health card on it and there are duplicate copies of those on my iCloud account. You can file that under paranoia. I will go into more detail about what’s in this case when I arrive in India.

Speaking of the laptop bag, it’s a Tucano Figura Medium. It’s old, as in a decade old. But it’s so durable you could never tell and it’s never failed me. Though if I had to replace it I’d have problem as the company no longer sells this model.